The link about how he aborted the race is well worth reading. From Wikipedia:
Kanakuri pulled out midway through the race and was cared for by a local family. Embarrassed from his "failure", he silently returned to Japan without notifying race officials.
Although local newspapers at the time correctly reported that Kanakuri withdrew halfway through the race, the fact that Kanakuri had not officially reported back after doing so gave birth to humorous stories in Sweden about the supposedly lost Japanese runner.
In 1967, he was contacted by Swedish Television and offered the opportunity to complete his run. He accepted and completed the marathon, remarking,"Kanaguri of Japan is now in the goal. Time, 54 years and 8 months 6 days 5 hours 32 minutes 20 seconds 3, which will end the entire schedule of the 5th Stockholm Olympic Games," was announced. He commented "It was a long trip. Along the way, I got married, had six children and 10 grandchildren."
Ah yes, Hiroo Onoda. He was adamant the war was still on, that his commanding officer had to be flown in to Sabang Island in Mindoro province (Philippines) just to give him his orders.
The part about the cost of a cheap straw shoe vs the longer lasting tabi reminded me of the Sam Vimes Boots Theory from the Pratchett novels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
I wonder how true this actually is now. I initially read this and believe it was accurate but I've come across two things that make we wonder about it now
Specifically for clothes, the cost of "good quality" products could potentially be a lot more expensive, to the extent that the cost per wear is still better going with the cheap option and buying replacements more frequently. I only have one piece of anec-data which is a spreadsheet a coworker created to track this for themselves
The other thing this would seem to imply is that the total spending increases at some people as income goes down, as they have to pay for more lower quality things, but what I saw a graph of spending vs income (which I can't find again after some searching) that doesn't hold up in the data. That could mean that they're compensating for high costs of some things by spending less in other areas, I guess.
Not for boots. For some stuff the more expensive version still lasts longer or is otherwise better. But usually a) it doesn’t matter or b) you need more than money to find the “best” version of something, you need connections or you need to know how to search the web and filter bias. Boots, household appliances, etc. aren’t the issue.
Being poor is still very much expensive. You can’t afford good insurance, you spend more money on repairing old things than buying new ones, you can’t afford education and credentials necessarily to get a good job, you can’t unwind to prevent burnout, you can’t take risks or spend time on side projects, you can’t quit terrible jobs because otherwise you’ll become homeless, constant depression about how life is unfair and anxiety about late payments impacts health and performance (which impacts university grades or job salary), extra things you must do like wait in like at the food panty and work extra jobs also impact health and performance, and more. It really is significantly easier to make money when you have money.
You need to read first-hand accounts of poor people from social media like https://reddit.com/r/povertyfinance and https://reddit.com/r/homeless to really understand (and yes, people lie and exaggerate on social media, and I see many instances of missing context and over-exaggeration on these subs, but the basic logic behind “being poor makes life much harder” very much checks out, and everything I mentioned above is 100% accurate. There are even former SWEs among the poor and even though they can avoid some of the pitfalls, they are nonetheless struggling the same)
In terms of financial incentives, it is regressive. Overdraft fees, late fees, fines for parking or not having insurance or not fixing that tail light, poorer performing credit cards, worse interest rates, etc.
I wouldn't say that all cheap stuff is "bought twice" or is the worse long term value (living out of the clothes donation bin, for both rich and poor, is probably the best value as far as durability-to-cost). It's that the poor don't have the choice to buy the expensive stuff when it IS a better value.
I have been absolutely loving wearing these in colder, drier weather. Its an extremely minimal shoe- feels like being barefoot, They are too warm for warmer weather and they absorb water is wet weather. I dealt with wet weather by using sealskinz waterproof socks. I bought two sizes: a smaller size for just my foot and a bigger size to accommodate socks.
So far I have used none of them, but different Five Finger shoes extensivly. I can recommend the general principle much, if you enjoy barefeet running, but not cutting your feet open.
> I can recommend the general principle much, if you enjoy barefeet running, but not cutting your feet open.
I can also recommend Vibram five finger shoes for swimming where there are rocks or sharp shells or corals. They basically work like wetsuit feet with a great grip - and helps avoiding falls and cuts. Works both for summer and winter in my experience.
Well, I would love the vibrams to be custom cut to my feet, as well, because my toes are not standard size either (no feet truly is).
Sometimes in fact, 2 toes get into one, but it is actually not too uncomfortable, so maybe it would still work for you? There are many different models, some would probably be better suited as they are more flexible and wider, but I have no idea about the current models.
I've been considering these for bouldering, if anybody has tried that, please let me know.
I am aware that climbing shoes are designed to be stiff to give you support, but I'm wondering if I can strengthen my feet enough and use something like this?
I am going to try bouldering in them as well. There was a thread on Reddit where someone mentioned really liking bouldering in them, but then the bouldering gym wouldn’t let him use them because they look like socks.
You don't need socks with them. I have a smaller size for no socks and one size larger for wearing with socks. I wear the larger size with socks when it is colder or wetter. I have multiple pairs and haven't needed to wash them yet. The seal skinz socks need to get washed frequently if they frequently get wet and sweaty.
At some temperate (different for every person) the sealskinz will be too hot. I really liked wearing them in near freezing weather- basically I didn’t have to buy a waterproof boots. When it’s above 50 Fahrenheit I don’t wear them because I will sweat in them.
Cannot answer your historical question, but maybe I noticed something relevant today.
I went out this morning with a couple of dozen Japanese to do a dragon dance (Ryūjin) around the local village. Exactly like this one[1] from 8 years ago.
80% of the dancers were wearing tabi. I figured out why. Upon re-entering the community centre from where festivities are organised, tabi-wearers could just wipe their feet and enter. The rest of us had to hold that dragon while simultaneously removing shoes and stacking them.
Socially, tabi are the only acceptable in-and-out shoes/socks I have seen here.
After a shortage of leather, "Manufacturers switched to making tabis from cotton and other fabrics. And here is where the shoe started turning into a sock."
Shojiro [...] "developed a new kind of tabi made of thick cotton and a rubber sole. They called this a jika-tabi (地下足袋) which loosely translates to “tabis that touch the ground”. This married their expertise in fabric tabis and their experiments with a material that was relatively new to Japan. And turned the sock turned back into a shoe."
So basically the most common variation in different times changed depending on available materials and these days cotton tabis are used only as part of traditional dresses.
>Don't know of any other country that doesn't use shoes.
Not only "shoes", they usually need to be conformant to local safety norms (EN ISO 20345 in Eu) that include a "hard point" (resistant to 200 joule or 20 kg falling from 1 meter height) and - usually - an anti-perforation layer underneath (those used in construction, at least here in Italy are either S1P or S3 type).
Unrelated: Roofers in Australia started wearing an early tennis shoe that was cotton canvas with a sole that emulated a rubber tire. It became so popular they made a steel toed version. Only steel toed tennis shoe I know of. https://volley.com.au/products/safety-canvas-black-grey?vari...
The regular ones are fantastic by the way. Very comfortable, insanely flexible and grippy. But they do tend to fall apart quickly. In AU they're very cheap, but more expensive for us.
Yeah, if we say the three stages are 1) leather (shoe), 2) cotton (sock), 3) cotton + rubber (shoe), then (1) is extinct but (2) and (3) both exist today.
Nit pick but fun trivia: the marathon distance wasn’t yet fixed at its current 42.195 km until 1924. While that distance had been used before, for the 1912 olympic marathon it was 40.2 km.
i think that Kumiko in "mona lisa overdrive" runs through a freezing London in rubber tabi. at the time of reading i thought - that is going to hurt. of course, we don't get many freezing days in london now.
Kanakuri pulled out midway through the race and was cared for by a local family. Embarrassed from his "failure", he silently returned to Japan without notifying race officials.
Although local newspapers at the time correctly reported that Kanakuri withdrew halfway through the race, the fact that Kanakuri had not officially reported back after doing so gave birth to humorous stories in Sweden about the supposedly lost Japanese runner.
In 1967, he was contacted by Swedish Television and offered the opportunity to complete his run. He accepted and completed the marathon, remarking,"Kanaguri of Japan is now in the goal. Time, 54 years and 8 months 6 days 5 hours 32 minutes 20 seconds 3, which will end the entire schedule of the 5th Stockholm Olympic Games," was announced. He commented "It was a long trip. Along the way, I got married, had six children and 10 grandchildren."